Turn Off These Two Settings to Stop T-Mobile From Collecting Even More of Your Data
Like most companies, T-Mobile doesn’t just want your money; it wants your data, too. In May, we learned that T-Mobile’s T-Life app records customers’ phone screens by default—or at least everything they do in it. You could opt out of this feature, but you’d only do so if you knew about it and knew there was a setting to stop it, which is pretty suspicious.
You can turn this feature off in T-Life’s Privacy Center, where the company stores all of its user privacy-related settings. (T-Mobile says it collects your data to “improve” your experience and personalize the ads you see.) If you’re a customer, it’s a good idea to take a moment here and opt out of any data collection practices you don’t care about. (Which, for most of us, means all of them.)
But if you’ve already checked the Privacy Center and are happy with the settings, now’s the time to do it again: As The Mobile Report reports , T-Mobile has two new toggles in its Privacy Center that are turned on by default. Without your intervention, these two settings will allow T-Mobile to collect more of your data, in one case quite a bit.
Here’s what each new setting does and how to disable it.
Protection against fraud and identity theft
First up is a new feature that claims to “help protect you from fraud and identity theft.” According to T-Mobile, the Fraud & Identity Theft Protection setting uses your data to create “indicators” of potential fraud. T-Mobile stores these indicators itself, but also shares them with third parties, like the companies you have accounts with, to help identify fraudulent use of your data. T-Mobile says the feature uses data such as account information and activity, device information, text and call patterns, and interactions with “potentially” malicious URLs.
The goal is certainly noble, and a little refreshing, too. It’s nice to see a privacy feature from a major company that’s explicitly aimed at preventing identity fraud, even when it’s happening outside of T-Mobile’s channels. But is it worth it? Maybe that’s up to the individual user. I don’t have T-Mobile, but if I were banking on user privacy, I’d probably pass on this feature. It’s a lot of information to provide without a guarantee that it will actually prevent fraud. (I mean, call and text patterns? Wow.)
We also don’t know what third parties T-Mobile shares this data with. It could be another company that already has this data about you, like your bank. Or it could be a completely unrelated company that now has information about your device and how long your calls typically last. No thanks.
Provision of certain financial information
If T-Mobile uses your data to manage “financial offerings,” including things like device financing or postpaid services, it may share that data with a wide range of third parties, including:
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Financial companies for joint marketing
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Partners for “everyday business purposes,” especially if the data is related to your credit history
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Partners for marketing purposes
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Unaffiliated parties for marketing purposes
“Partners” is not a very specific term, but since both partners and non-partners can equally receive your data for marketing purposes, it’s safe to say that the data sharing pool is large .
Disabling these two switches
To turn off these toggles, or any other toggles in the Privacy Center, you’ll need to open your privacy control panel. You can find it online at this link , but you can also access it through the T-Life app. According to The Mobile Report, the option is under the Manage tab , where you’ll need to tap the gear icon, scroll down, and select Privacy & Policies . Either way, select your T-Mobile brand and sign in if necessary.
Here you will find the necessary switches. To turn off these two features, look for the switches next to “Share data for fraud and identity theft protection” and “Share certain information used to manage financial offers.”
You’re not done yet.
Please note that these settings apply to individual phone lines, not your entire T-Mobile account. If you have multiple lines on your account, you’ll need to log into the control panel for each line to make changes.